The 1981 Listening Post - T.V. Smith’s Explorers - The Last Words of the Great Explorer

T.V. Smith’s Explorers - The Last Words of the Great Explorer 

#320

July 1981

T.V. Smith’s Explorers

The Last Words of the Great Explorer

Genre: ArtGlamPunk

4.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Have Fun

Walk Away

I don’t know TV Smith, do you? He was part of The Adverts but I also missed them. Well, that’s the raison d’être here, isn’t it? Did we miss anything? Like The Wanderers or The Jags? In the case of TV Smith here’s what I am vining on: This sounds like Iggy and the Stooges if they were fronted by David Bowie. 

And, of course, you are saying…um…Allen…David Bowie was probably the ONLY person who gave a shit about Iggy Pop and is the reason he owns a house or two. And that’s true. But, to me, Iggy never sounded like David. Not even in the wheelhouse. I never really understood the relationship. And TV Smith takes the ‘I can’t sing but I can sing even though it sounds like I can’t sing” David Bowie and matches it to Pop’s Punk for people who like pop but also want to call themselves punk when really they are just popster. 

And that’s what each song sounds like to me. 

The title track is an epic of nascent 80s rock and I’m shocked that I’ve never heard this record. Shocked that I’ve never her OF this record. The theatricality of Boomtown Rats but punky-er.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-last-words-of-the-great-explorer/1078568000 This is not the correct running order for that, consult discogs.